Bill Cosby @ the Palace; 11/10/12

ALBANY — The rapport between a consummate-old-pro performer and his audience can be a beautiful thing to watch. The most obvious example are musicians: Tony Bennett, B.B. King, Barbra Streisand.

In comedy, there’s Bill Cosby. In the abstract his gifts may be slightly diminished, but the goodwill and indulgence extended to him by fans creates a singular, happy atmosphere. People want to laugh, and, over the course of an hour and a half, Cosby gives them abundant opportunity.

Always a storyteller, Cosby is, at 75, in the long-form portion of his career. On Saturday night at the Palace Theatre, he was in a joyous mood, utterly devoid of some of the sourness he’s sometimes exhibited over the past decade and a half. The anecdote that started his show, about meeting a group of terminally ill kids who had far sunnier outlooks than the Cos did, lasted almost 15 minutes and yet didn’t feel padded. Even a joke about a couple married for 63 years, who stumped God with a question at the pearly gates, took three minutes. (The punchline: They asked, “When are our children going to get their act together?”)

Somehow, you don’t want him to speed it up. Cosby’s voices, facial expressions, timing and insight are so easy to enjoy, so polished and yet seemingly so fresh, that, even in the middle of a routine from forever ago — say, the one that ends with Adam seeing Eve for the first time and exclaiming, “Whoo! Man!” — you luxuriate in the telling.

What was especially evident Saturday night was how alive in the moment Cosby was. When he said “pearly gates” and a person seated in front exclaimed in alarm, Cosby said, “If it’s the pearly gates you don’t say, ‘Uh-oh.’ That’s what you say before the long ride on the red-hot sliding board to the other place. When you’re on Earth, ‘Uh-oh’ is (what you say when) your wife is coming.”

Cosby’s discursive anecdotes are commodious enough to allow for hilarious asides that seem only modestly amusing in print. During a half-hour bit about his problems with the narrative of the book of Genesis, for example, Cosby elicited roars from the audience when he said, apropos of almost nothing, “My mother was a Methodist and my father was a Lucky Strike,” and, “I have a message for the atheists: Leave yourself some wiggle room. It only makes sense. What are you going to say to God? ‘Oh, I was just kidding. Can’t you take a joke?'”

Cosby’s best material, and also what was most vociferously received, was about being a grandparent. All he needed to say about grandchildren was, “They come to your house,” then shake his head while covering his face with his palm. The audience howled. He said, with an inflection that implicitly excluded himself, “Some grandparents are wonderful people.” More laughter. He said, “They are always saying that their grandchildren are ‘gifts to them from God’ — through a child they did not like.”